---
layout: docs
page_title: Disks for VirtualBox Provider
sidebar_title: VirtualBox
description: |-
  Vagrant comes with support out of the box for VirtualBox, a free,
  cross-platform consumer virtualization product.
---

# VirtualBox

~> **Warning!** This feature is experimental and may break or
change in between releases. Use at your own risk. It currently is not officially
supported.

This feature currently reqiures the experimental flag to be used. To explicitly enable this feature, you can set the experimental flag to:

```
VAGRANT_EXPERIMENTAL="disks"
```

Please note that `VAGRANT_EXPERIMENTAL` is an environment variable. For more
information about this flag visit the [Experimental docs page](/docs/experimental/)
for more info. Without this flag enabled, any disks defined will not be configured.

**Vagrant currently only supports VirtualBox version 5.x and newer for configuring and
attaching disks.**

Because of how VirtualBox handles disk management, a Vagrant guest _must_ be powered
off for any changes to be applied to a guest. If you make a configuration change
with a guests disk, you will need to `vagrant reload` the guest for any changes
to be applied.

When new disks are defined to be attached to a guest, Vagrant will attach
disks to a particular storage controller based on the type of disk configured:

- For the `:disk` type, Vagrant will use the storage controller containing the
  boot disk. It will also create the disk if necessary.
- For the `:dvd` type, Vagrant will attach the disk to the storage controller
  that comes earliest in the machine's boot order. For example, if a VM has a
  SATA controller and an IDE controller, the disk will be attached to the IDE
  controller.

Vagrant will not be able to configure disks of a given type if the associated
storage controller does not exist. In this case, you may use
[provider-specific customizations](/docs/providers/virtualbox/configuration#vboxmanage-customizations)
to add a required storage controller.

It should also be noted that storage controllers have different limits for the
number of disks that can be attached. Attempting to configure more than the
maximum number of disks for a storage controller type will result in a Vagrant
error.

For more information on how to use VirtualBox to configure disks for a guest, refer
to the [general usage](/docs/disks/usage) and [configuration](/docs/disks/configuration)
guide for more information.
